The State of Web Vitals

Connection and preload hints and the Core Web Vitals

12.9% of audited sites (25,979) combine preconnect and preload hints (84% good LCP, 1.5s median), while 13.6% rely solely on legacy dns-prefetch hints (71% good LCP, 1.9s median).

Field data PhoneDesktopAll Scope All sites October 2026 edition · All devices field outcomes

41.8% of sites use no resource hints connection and preload hints, and 87% of those sites have a good LCP, against 82% of all sites.

The State of Web Vitals · October 2026 · 210,902 crawled sites · 196,263 with all devices field data · 201,622 sites with connection and preload hintsBy Arjen Karel · corewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
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LCP pass rate

Sites with no resource hints connection and preload hints have a good LCP most often: 87%, against 82% of all sites. Sites with only dns-prefetch hints connection hints have it least often, at 71%.

SitesGood, needs improvement, poor LCPMedian
All sites196,26382%1.5s
No resource hints 41.8%81,04287%1.4s
Both preconnect and preload 12.9%25,20084%1.5s
Preload without preconnect 16.2%31,40183%1.5s
Preconnect without preload 15.5%29,96380%1.6s
DNS-prefetch only 13.6%26,35371%1.9s
GoodNeeds improvementPoorSites: with Chrome field data
The State of Web Vitals · October 2026 · 210,902 crawled sites · 196,263 with all devices field data · 201,622 sites with connection and preload hintsBy Arjen Karel · corewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
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Connection and preload hints usage

No resource hints is the most used: 41.8% of sites.

No resource hints 41.8% Preload without preconnect 16.2% Preconnect without preload 15.5% DNS-prefetch only 13.6% Both preconnect and preload 12.9%
No resource hints 41.8% Preload without preconnect 16.2% Preconnect without preload 15.5% DNS-prefetch only 13.6% Both preconnect and preload 12.9%
The State of Web Vitals · October 2026 · 210,902 crawled sites · 196,263 with all devices field data · 201,622 sites with connection and preload hintsBy Arjen Karel · corewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
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The four LCP phases

Across the four LCP sub-parts in Chrome's field data, the largest gap between no resource hints and only dns-prefetch hints sits in time to first byte (TTFB): 599 ms median for no resource hints against 1107 ms for only dns-prefetch hints. Overall median field LCP is 1.4s for no resource hints (TTFB 599 ms, load delay 261 ms, load duration 126 ms, render delay 202 ms) versus 1.9s for only dns-prefetch hints.

Median LCP phase breakdown (Chrome field p75) Load delay Median LCP
Sites with connection and preload hints 140,750647 ms318 ms224 ms318 mslab 318 ms1.5s
No resource hints 57,346599 ms261 ms261 mslab 261 ms1.4s
Preload without preconnect 23,304645 ms339 ms222 ms339 mslab 339 ms1.5s
DNS-prefetch only 18,8801107 ms342 ms234 ms342 mslab 342 ms1.9s
Preconnect without preload 21,277613 ms354 ms239 ms354 mslab 354 ms1.6s
Both preconnect and preload 19,943545 ms417 ms269 ms417 mslab 417 ms1.5s
TTFB Resource load delay Resource load time Element render delay
The State of Web Vitals · October 2026 · 210,902 crawled sites · 196,263 with all devices field data · 201,622 sites with connection and preload hintsBy Arjen Karel · corewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
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Understanding connection and preload hints

Why targeted preload and preconnect beat legacy dns-prefetch

dns-prefetch only resolves the domain name, leaving TCP and TLS handshakes on the critical path. Pairing preconnect on critical asset CDNs with preload on the LCP image eliminates both connection and discovery delay. Across 25,979 sites (12.9%) pairing preconnect and preload, 84% pass field LCP (1.5s median), compared with 71% (1.9s median) on the 13.6% using dns-prefetch alone.

Use <link rel="preload"> for late-discovered hero images or critical fonts, and limit <link rel="preconnect"> to the 2 to 4 third-party origins needed on the critical path. Across all audited sites, 12.9% combine preconnect and preload (84% good LCP, 1.5s median) versus 13.6% with dns-prefetch only (71% good LCP, 1.9s median).

Go fix it Guide to resource prioritization → Preload the LCP image → When preloading stylesheets does not make sense → 103 Early Hints →
The State of Web Vitals · October 2026 · 210,902 crawled sites · 196,263 with all devices field data · 201,622 sites with connection and preload hintsBy Arjen Karel · corewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
Platform & Framework Takeaways

How connection and preload hints plays out per platform

What the field data shows when you isolate a single CMS or framework.

WordPress 65,509 sites
35% sites with dns-prefetch only

35% of WordPress sites emit only dns-prefetch connection hints.

WordPress core prints resource hints in <head> with wp_resource_hints(), populating dns-prefetch from registered script and style hosts. Across WordPress, 35% of sites ship only dns-prefetch (69% LCP pass rate), 16% use preload (72%), and 23% emit no hints (75%).

Explore WordPress resource hints data →
React 9,570 sites
92% vs 57% good LCP (preload vs dns-prefetch)

62% of React sites emit preload hints (92% good LCP vs 57% on dns-prefetch only).

Across React sites, 62% emit preload hints (92% good LCP, 1.2s median) compared with 9% emitting dns-prefetch only (57% good LCP, 2.3s median).

Explore React resource hints data →
Related signals Cacheable responses → Last-Modified present → Requests via CDN → HTML size (kB) → By Arjen Karel · 210,902 crawled sites (196,263 with all devices Chrome field data, 201,622 sites with connection and preload hints, October 2026) · How we measured